Last week my car battery went flat. The car had been driven during the morning but was now needed to collect grandchildren from school.
My neighbour was outside so I went to get the jump leads, at the back under the parcel shelf. THe tailgate wouldn't open. It was locked and needed power to unlock. There is no way to open the tailgate under these conditions. The car is a 2017 Kia Niro hybrid. Would I buy another? Not with this limitation.
I was in a similar situation a few weeks ago. Key fob wouldn't work. Was it the key fob battery or the car battery? Didn't know. Fortunately my Kia (Picanto) has a traditional door lock and key so was able to get into it to open the bonnet and check the battery. Down to 5.5 volts! What the f**k! I don't use the car that often, say once a fortnight for a 15 mile round trip, but didn't thing the battery could ever get that low. I now give it a charge once a week.
There does seem to be a problem with electric openers. One only needs to look at the number of people drowned when cars go into rivers.
That's been common for some time, a Ford I had twenty years ago had no external lock on the tailgate, but had a mechanical release under the dashboard. Presumably, one day the cable would break.
But usually with the rear seats down, it is possible to get things behind them. Not always easy, my current car has a compartment for that sort of stuff under the floor of the boot area (no spare wheel, of course), and I haven't yet tried to see if the floor can be raised with the tailgate shut..
You should have a key to unlock the drivers door and then fold down the rear seats to access the luggage area ?.
What does the handbook advise in this situation ?.
If this is the original battery then its done quite well to last 7 years.
A non-hybrid vehicle might give you some warning as you start the engine, as you should notice the less sprightly noise it makes as it turns the engine, but hybrids typically move off under traction motor control so you don't notice the engine starting.
I'd be surprised if there isn't a cord that can be pulled, or non-obvious hole into which a screwdriver can be poked to release it, e.g.
There are jump start terminals in the fuse box under the bonnet for precisely this reason:
Theo
There may be, as with my car, a well hidden manual over-ride. Mine is behind a small nondescript panel on the tailgate doorpost. I would never have known about it except that the motor on mine played up once and the bloke at the garage showed me how to open the tailgate from inside the car.
A simple search yields many answers: <kia niro how to open the tailgate with dead battery>
Its all the security stuff and no doubt part of the computer that drains the battery. Brian
Did you try to fold down the back seats?
Tim
Don't most such cars have an actual sawtooth key stored inside the fob and which will open the doors in the normal way??
I didn't even know that about the Beemer I was driving until the AA patrolman (summoned because of a flat battery!) showed it to me.
That was worth a fiver as a tip.
I've had the opposite - battery failed with car totally unlocked and the windows down. Used another car to rush off to buy a battery from many miles away, only to find that they'd sold me a duff one, they would not come out and replace it with a good one and everywhere was shutting.
The car was in an innaccessible position, so we had to push it into the road, blocking it, while we used jump leads to get it started and moved out of the way. Then everything except the driver's door was closed/locked - as that was the only door that could be locked without power, once the engine was stopped.
The Rover I had years ago had a key AND you could use the radio buttons to enter a code to override the immobiliser.
Yes but that only opens the driver's door. It doesn't open the tailgate. A supple person _might_ be able to climb over (front and rear) seats and gain access to the boot space - then clamber back to get out again. Many of us aren't that supple.
Surely if it's a 4-door you just open the back door (from inside if necessary) and lean in to fold the back seat down, and if it's a 3-door you just tip the front seat forward?
I had a Smart once. Only one door had access with a mechanical key and that was the tailgate.
nib
In message snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com, at
10:40:55 on Thu, 18 Jan 2024, pinnerite snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com remarked:I had a neighbour with a Honda Jazz which they'd garaged front-in, but the battery went flat. I couldn't charge the battery, or even used jump-leads, because we couldn't open the bonnet (let alone get into the car to release the handbrake to get it out into the daylight).
So what did you do?
The usual problem with that is the mechanical tailgate release is on the inside of the tailgate, so you need to get access to the boot area. If the boot is deep and sloping you have to crawl into the wedge part of the boot to access it.
But you rarely need to do that since there is a jump point under the bonnet. Apply power there and the power locks then work. You'd only need the tailgate release if the battery was extremely far gone, eg a complete short circuit, or you had no external source of power - as I had to do once, to see what kind of battery it was in order to buy a replacement. I should have just run a bench PSU on a long extension lead, but suppose it could have happened away from home.
Theo
Wouldn't matter. There's a manual boot lock lever down by the driver's right foot.
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